Nicolas Rodriguez Bautista, alias 'Gabino'

Nicolas Rodriguez Bautista, alias "Gabino," was a peasant recruit who rose to become the commander-in-chief and political leader of Colombia guerrilla group the National Liberation Army (ELN). He is one of the group’s elders and maintains strong ties to Cuba, which has supported the guerrilla group since the 1960s.

History

Gabino was born January 25, 1950 in San Vicente de Chucuri, a city in Colombia's mountainous central northern department Santander. He joined the ELN in 1964, at age 14, when the insurgency was but an idea. In 1965, Gabino participated in the ELN’s first military assaults in the municipality of Simacota, Santander. In 1973, he became part of the national leadership council (Direccion Nacional) after two founding members died in battle.

Gabino Factbox

In the late 1970s, he assumed joint leadership with Manuel Perez, alias "El Cura," the Spanish priest who had joined the group in the 1960s. After El Cura's death in 1998, Gabino became commander-in-chief of the ELN. He is considered the ELN’s main strategist and its elder statesman, having seen the group’s beginnings and its near endings.

Gabino has also opened the way for peace talks on several occasions, including trying to join government negotiations with the FARC in 2012. The ELN and the Colombian government announced "exploratory" peace talks in June 2014, but formal talks have yet to begin.

Criminal Activities

Extortion and kidnapping are the ELN's primary revenue sources. The guerrillas also dabble in Colombia's drug trade but are far less involved than larger guerrilla group the FARC.

Colombian courts have sentenced Gabino, in absentia, for multiple crimes including the 1998 Machuca massacre, in which 84 people burned to death following an ELN oil pipeline bombing, and the mass-kidnapping of 186 people from a church in Cali in 1999.

Geography

Gabino's ELN group operates throughout Colombia and sometimes across the border in neighboring Ecuador and Venezuela. The guerrilla army is generally considered strongest in Colombia's oil-producing regions like the Eastern Plains and parts of the Andean mountain range.

Allies and Enemies

Gabino is wanted by the Colombian and US governments. His group reportedly works with organized crime elements in drug and kidnapping operations and has occasionally formed limited alliances with the FARC.

Prospects

Despite aggressive bombing and sabotage campaign directed mainly against international energy firms and Colombia state oil company Ecopetrol, the ELN has declined from a mid-1990's peak of close to 5,000 fighters to around 2,000 fighters today. Should the government engage the rebels in formal peace talks, Gabino's fate would be strongly linked to the outcome, as the ELN's commander-in-chief.

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